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From a post of mine on 2/1/14.
- Last day of January, 2024.
- Woah. This was a case out of White Settlement and handled by the Tarrant County DA's office. Defense lawyers were Brett Boone and Blake Burns. Prosecutors were Matt Rivers and Jasmine Banks.
- Uh.
- To review, Paxton admitted in his pleadings in a Whistleblower suit that he did all the bad things the plaintiffs said that he did. That, he says, should prevent him from having to give a deposition. The trial judge said no, he must testify. Paxton immediately went to an appellate court who ruled against him. Then he went to the Texas Supreme Court who bailed him out yesterday, for now.
- Very legal nerdy stuff: The plaintiffs' response has a really interesting discussion of what in the heck is supposed to happen when a defendant answers a lawsuit but then "admits" (kind of) the allegations. Basically, this has never happened and there's no clean cut procedural rules in Texas as to what to do next.
- As a recognized political expert, I don't think this seems to be a winning strategy. And if you think their war isn't real, watch this incredible Fox News compilation where MAGA is obsessed with their conspiracy filled Taylor Swift fantasies.
- If these money grabbing trumped up trials lead to Roundup being taken off the market, I'll scream. I've used a ton of it for 25 years and will continue to use it.
- I've got a DPS story.
- My license is set to expire and I've had a appointment, scheduled online, for several weeks. It's been scheduled for several weeks because DPS is apparently so busy that it takes that long to get the first available appointment.
- But I had some time yesterday so I thought I would go down early to the Decatur DPS office to see if I could get a walk-in appointment. I was told online that there would be a "kiosk" there where I could see if they could get me in.
- As I walk in, there's a piece of paper taped to the door that says walk-in appointments can be scheduled online beginning at 7:45 a.m. It was 8:15. I scanned the QR code on the sign (there is no "kiosk") and walked in.
- A very nice lady asked me if I had an appointment, and I said I didn't. She told me the same thing that the sign did: Go online to see if any slots were available.
- I told her I was doing that right now on my phone as, thinking of sitting down, I looked at a ton of empty seats. At that point she told me, "OK, but you can't hang out in a public building."
- [Insert extreme record scratch sound going off in my head.]
- The best retort I had was, "Really,? You can't 'hang out' in public building?" To her credit, she remained pleasant, but she maintained her unique interpretation of "public."
- So I walked outside -- I thought about asking if it was permissible to "hang out in a public parking lot" but I didn't want to risk a trooper putting me on the ground -- and continued to check online for a walk-in appointment. Which, come to think of it, is an oxymoron.
- But get this. After entering my basic data, the DPS website tells me, correctly, that I already had an appointment for a future date, and that by merely continuing to see if a current walk-in appointment is available I risked losing my appointment which I had scheduled weeks earlier. There's no way I'm taking that risk.
- So I headed to my car and glanced around. I found solace in seeing a bunch of people in the parking lot just as beaten down as I was by the experience at DPS because, they too, couldn't solve a simple problem.
- And you know what I thought of next? That this man makes $345,250.
- I bet the special prosecutor in the Georgia election tampering case paid a fortune just so he could shut the divorce proceedings down -- since doing so prevents him, or the D.A., from having to testify about their affair. At least for now. This is all such a mess which really perturbs me.
- That seems like a lot of money until . . .
- . . . you put it in perspective.
- Very legal nerdy stuff: Because prosecutors didn't know how to handle a Motion for Summary Judgment properly, yesterday it lost a ton of money it was trying to "legally" steal in four civil forfeiture cases.
- Coin flip talk: I distinctly remember that before any NFL game that the ref would tell a player to "call it in the air" for the initial coin toss. Now they have the player choose heads or tails before it is flipped. That seems wrong.
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